Reflection

by

Humanities

Reflecting on the 3 documents you wrote for this project, please answer the following questions (No specific word count):

  1. Briefly describe the overall scenario you were writing in. What was the problem or problems you were trying to solve, in your own words? Obviously, I have the text of the scenarios. The purpose of this response is to get a sense of your overall “take” on the facts and your approach to the problem.
  1. Which of the three documents was the most difficult to write, and why do you think that was? If all the emails were equally difficult (or easy) to write, what was it about the overall situation that made them that way?
  1. What is the intended outcome of the document you wrote? If all the documents produced the results you wanted, what happens next? How likely is it, given the facts of the scenario and your experience with people, that this situation will be resolved in a satisfactory fashion?

Scenario


You are the project manager of a civil engineering company. Your current project is a large-scale (100 miles) construction project that is restoring a portion of the wetlands in coastal Louisiana and SE Texas.

Currently, you are building a series of temporary access roads so that you can get equipment to one of the low-lying areas. This project involves a literal convoy of heavy trucks. Your firm has received numerous complaints from local residents about the noise and dust. In particular, you’ve received three letters from the same woman, Ms. Winnifred Doucette Lejeune. The last letter contained 10 additional signatures. If residents’ complaints continue to escalate, they could slow down the project and put you behind schedule.

You make a trip from the office headquarters in Lafayette, LA to the Calcasieu/Sabine Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Area to see what’s going on. On site, you see everything seems to progressing fine. Workers are on the job by 7:00am and running until almost sundown, but in the local bar and grill, all the talk is about “the darn government project to nowhere.”

When you get back to the office you decide you need to take action.

Deliverables

Based on the scenario above, your deliverables will be the following:

  • document to Ms. Winnifred Doucette Lejeune, who after further investigation, is a local resident that seems to spearhead any effort the town needs
  • document to the company vice-president, Richard Smith, who asked to be told of any problem, or in his words, “anything that even remotely smells like a problem” with the project.
  • document to sub-contractor supervisor at the construction site. Your firm has used this sub-contractor for almost five years, but this is the first project you’ve worked on with this particular supervisor.